Magazines.

Periodical Explores Trips Of Discovery And Of Death

If you prefer Club Meds, the Yarlung Tsangpo Gorge in Tibet is not for you.

But it is the engrossing, if unnerving, subject of "Trouble in Shangri-la," a tale of stunning discovery and tragedy in the premier issue of National Geographic Adventure.

Aimed at "active, adventurous readers," the first new magazine in 15 years from the National Geographic Society includes a look at the gorge said to be "the last great prize of earthly exploration; its river, the Everest of white water." In particular, it inspects two 1998 expeditions, one ending in head-turning discovery, the other in death.

China opened the gorge to Westerners in 1992. Its Tsangpo River is treacherous, dropping an average of 65 feet per mile (about eight times the drop of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon) and, in some spots, 250 feet per mile.

When the two teams began their expeditions, reporter Michael McRae writes, there was not just a vivid sporting challenge of a great unexplored river but the search for "the doorway to paradise."

"In Tibetan scripture, the region of the Tsangpo gorges is known as Beyul Pemako: `The Hidden Land of the Opening Lotus.' According to 16th Century Buddhist texts, the Tantric sorcerer and sage Padmasambhava sealed off this area and certain others along the Himalayas as refuges during times of strife or religious persecution.

"These hidden sanctuaries were cut off from the world by high, snow-covered passes and guarded by mischievous celestial nymphs called dakinis, who would test a pilgrim's motives for making his journey. Only the properly humble and pure of motive could pass safely into the promised lands, depicted as tropical paradises of earthly and spiritual delights."

The holiest of sites is called Pemako, a place that presumably would answer a grand geographic mystery, namely how could the Tsangpo somehow drop 11,000 feet from the entrance to the canyon down to its emergence in Assam, India, as the Brahmaputra River just 200 miles later?

For many years, even geographers doubted that these two rivers were actually connected. And when it was later proven that they were, there grew the theory that the rapid drop could only be explained by gargantuan falls found somewhere in the canyon. That mystery was ultimately solved on one of last year's expeditions, and there's a gorgeous photo here to prove it.

But the gorge proved deadly, no surprise since when an Arizona outfitter who got one of the first permits to enter the gorge checked it out in 1993, he discovered a place cut off from the rest of the world.

There were natives who "spoke of aborigines living secretively in the southern jungles--a ferocious people called Tranaks who wear leaves and hunt tiger and leopard. They also warned of the Dugmas, female practitioners of an ancient cult who were said to conceal snake venom and toxic mushrooms under their fingernails, using the mixture to poison their victims' food or scratch them while they sleep."

It wasn't snake venom and toxic mushrooms that did in an American who was a top-notch kayaker and hotshot research chemist last year. It was a river swollen by a wicked monsoon season that generated awful floods in the Himalayas and a flow of water at least double that of the Colorado River.

The natives believe that while the American's body is probably still under water, "the river has carried his soul to Bodgaya, the place of Buddha's enlightenment. It is a privilege, they explained, to die in Pemako."

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